Aintree absentee wins Jack Tyner Memorial Chase

Grand Sefton Chase winner Warriors Tale is an enforced absentee from Aintree this week but won Cork's Jack Tyner Memorial Hunters Chase today, scoring a first win for his new trainer Eugene O'Sullivan and his jockey daughter Maxine O'Sullivan.

Warriors Tale's previous win was in the 2018 Grand Sefton Chase, run over the Grand National fences at Aintree when trained by Paul Nicholls, and today the Trevor Hemmings-owned 12 year old sprang an 18/1 surprise when beating 4/6 favourite Winged Leader

Afterwards O'Sullivan revealed “Trevor (Hemmings) loves Aintree and this horse was sent to me to take him to Aintree for the Foxhunters Chase next weekend but wasn't able to qualify with the point to points being called off.

“He needed to win and be placed (in point to points) to qualify, and I thought he had qualified in Boulta as he was in front everywhere bar the line, but there have been no point to points since.

“To win this for the third time in four years is fantastic and it wasn't on last year. He'll go to Punchestown and Killarney now.”

Today's race is named in honour of late jockey Jack Tyner, who died aged 19 on February 7 2011 and whose family helped raise funds for the Irish Injured Jockeys Fund on social media in recent weeks, as the hashtag #rememberjacktyner trended.